lossyWAV offers almost lossless audio conversion and it reduces the size of the output file substantially, compared to the original lossless input file.

This audio processor reduces the bitdepth of the signal on a block-by-block basis.

As a result, noise will be added to the processed output.

The noise is shaped by default and it can be fixed using various command line parameters.

The output can be processed using different lossless codecs such as WavPack, FLAC, LPAC, Tak, WMA-Lossless or MPEG-4 ALS, thus ensuring a small size of resulting files.

The main advantages of lossyWAV are the high degree of transparency and the absence of any compression artifacts. The small white noise produced during conversion cannot be distinguished by the human ear. Eliminating this white noise would not bring any improvement in sound quality and would increase the bit rate at the same time.

lossyWAV uses a libfftw3-3.dll (32 and 64 bit) library. Place it in the same folder as lossyWAV.exe and the FFT analysis will be accelerated.

This lossy preprocessor for PCM WAV audio allows you to choose between various quality levels: insane (the highest quality, suitable for conversion), extreme and high (both high quality and suitable for compression), standard (standard quality, mainly transparent), economic (average quality, partially transparent), portable (suitable for portable players and not completely transparent) and extraportable (lowest quality, likely to produce audible artifacts).

The latest version of lossyWAV underwent the following changes:

- Modification to "-l, --limit" parameter. The upper bound for the upper calculation limit is now 45.35% of the sample-rate of audio processed. Entering a value that exceeds this will no longer give an error, however the selected limit will be reduced to the upper bound for the upper calculation limit appropriate to the sample-rate of the audio being processed. The lower bound for the upper calculation limit remains at 12.5kHz.
- Introduction of a "hybrid" adaptive noise shaping "-s h, --shaping hybrid" that takes into account the results of all analyses performed and not just those for c.1.5ms and c.20ms.
- etc.

This compact audio processor is available in the x86 and x64 versions and it manages to improve the compression ratio for lossless codecs significantly. The output provided by this preprocessor may be lossy, but the artifacts cannot be perceived by the human ear.